Automated
...
Plotting in AutoCAD
Overview
Visual aids are important for developing a user-friendly design manual. The design team has manually created AutoCAD images to help users understand the plant designs. One major problem of this task, however, is that the developers need to regenerate the AutoCAD plots when they change a design of a single object in the system.
The major goal of this project is to automate the process of creating professional layout sheets in AutoCAD. The generated sheets will include not only drawings but also the dimensions and zoom scales of the models and the comments by the developers. Furthermore, the final layouts will be plotted into either JPEG or PNG files. The automation is based on AutoCAD features such as layout, dimensions, plots, and etc. More details of the used detailed information pertaining to the AutoCAD commands that are shown used is given in the next section. The MtoATranslator program is updated with new AutoCAD commands. The other AutoCAD design scripts will be renewed according to the updated MtoATranslator.
...
Achievements
Some of the commands above – layout, shademode, viewports layer, model space, and paper space – are debugged and added to the MtoATranslator. The processes of creating layout sheets, setting shademodes, and switching between model/paper spaces are automated.
Future Goals
The final goal of this task is to produce a paper space shown in the link below with the available AutoCAD commands.
Click here to see the sample drawing 1
Click to see the sample drawing 2
As this project is in the beginning stage, there will be many challenges to confront.<Final Example, drawn by Gonzalo Caprario, will be linked>
1. The MtoATranslator should be constantly updated as new commands for paper space and plot are found. Also, with current information in AutoCAD, we can only generate one view in one paper space. Considering that the plants have many components, such methods can result in numerous layouts causing inefficiency of our codes. We need to find commands that create and edit multi view ports in the paper space so that we can put two or three minor components in one paper space.
2. A method for putting more than one viewport in one layout sheet should be found.
3. The commands that add and edit texts in AutoCAD will be added in the MtoATranslator.
4. The dimension commands will be debugged. This task requires careful calculation to estimate the location of the dimension texts.
5. Following the dimension, the texts will be added.
6. The styles for dimensions and texts will be automatically set.